The Florida congressman said “the price of insulin increases as waistlines increase.”
On Thursday, the House passed a Democratic-sponsored bill to cap the price of insulin at $35 a month for most Americans
Among those voting “no” was Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), the GOP’s leading troll, who has come up with perhaps one of the most offensive justifications for GOP opposition to the popular bill. In his newsletter Friday, Gaetz told his constituents that he opposed the bill because fat people, not Big Pharma, are responsible for driving up the cost of insulin. He suggested that Type 2 diabetes, which is often linked to obesity, could be cured if only people would workout more and lose weight, at which point they wouldn’t need insulin anymore and the drug costs would fall without government intervention.
This isn’t the first time Gaetz has shown real scorn for overweight people. In January, on his podcast “Firebrand,” he decried Twitter’s banning of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for “telling the truth” about the relationship between Covid and obesity. After a segment about his advocacy for medical marijuana, he warned that legal weed was “not an excuse for America to sit home fat and high.” He decried “woke” culture for “cheerleading for the chubbies.”
Even his own colleagues are not immune from Gaetz’s obesity scorn.
“Maybe put Jerry Nadler in charge of the congressional weight loss program” pic.twitter.com/8ChxofqZUt
— Acyn (@Acyn) December 11, 2020
While Gaetz may claim to empathize with people struggling with weight issues, he clearly doesn’t think he’s one of them. In August, he declared that he didn’t “fit in” with other members of Congress because most of them are old, obese people.
Matt Gaetz says today that the reason he doesn’t “fit in” well with other Members of Congress is because most of them are old and obese. pic.twitter.com/4k8MinxYUE
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) August 26, 2021